


Don't Pick at Stitches Not Yet Healed

by define_serenity



Series: Uncharted [15]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drabble, Established Relationship, F/M, Fear, Fluff and Angst, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 15:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3574391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/define_serenity/pseuds/define_serenity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Uncharted 'Verse] "You don't need to protect me."</p><p>“Excuse me?” Caitlin glances up from the flatscreen, bambi eyes wide like a cute deer’s caught in headlights, the subtle slip of her bottom lip between her teeth a tell-tale sign of her complicity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Pick at Stitches Not Yet Healed

**Author's Note:**

> first line prompted by **anisstaranise**

"You don't need to protect me."

“Excuse me?” Caitlin glances up from the flatscreen, bambi eyes wide like a cute deer’s caught in headlights, the subtle slip of her bottom lip between her teeth a tell-tale sign of her complicity. 

“Did you really think Cisco could keep it from me?”

Caitlin gnaws at the inside of her cheek and straightens her shoulders, as if to brace for her justifications. “You’ve been taking on too much,” she eventually decides on, her words mild and earnest, which tells him she’s mulled this over often enough for most of her anger to have cooled to an ill-tempered surface frustration. 

He’s on thin ice, and he knows it.  

“You aren’t giving your body enough time to heal, and Cisco—”

“I know I’m not alone anymore,” he admits before he tempts his personal physician’s wrath and gets confined to sleep on the couch tonight. He chances a few steps closer, ready for a cold front to set in should he say the wrong thing. “But the city still needs me.”

“So do we,” Caitlin whispers, and a glint washes into her eyes, while one of her hands protectively covers her belly — her baby bump barely shows.

He reaches out and cradles Caitlin’s face in both hands, stroking his thumbs down her cheeks. “And I’ll always be here, okay? For you, and our baby.”

Caitlin nods, winding fingers into his sides, clawing at the affirmation of his body and hers sharing the same space; she’d never ask him to stop, even if it might be a wish she whispers to him late at night when they’re pressed so close together not a breath of air could get between them, but deep down he’s had to accept she will always take his leaving into account, his disappearing, his not coming back to her — it’s a thought stitched into her mindset the moment her mother packed her bags, the day Ronnie died, the day Ronnie left.

He kisses her forehead, her nose, and pauses at her lips, waiting for her to trip that half-step closer. When she does, his heart tripping a full step, their lips moving along a soft and slow kiss, his promise stitches along the seams where his life meets Caitlin’s.

 

 

**\- fin -**

 


End file.
